Reading & Phonics

Our Reading & Phonics Co-ordinator is Mrs Costigan

Teaching of Reading and Phonics

Aims

We believe that reading is a skill which is taught through planned, systematic phonics lessons which lead to the enjoyment of a range of books and the ability to access information independently. Through their own reading, we hope that children will develop their individual tastes in literature, develop an interest in reading and be able to understand and justify their own choice of books.

Our primary aims are:

To develop phonetic skills which lead to blending and reading fluently.

To promote confidence and positive attitudes to reading.

To promote and encourage good home/school links using a wide range of literature.

To develop children’s reading for pleasure through the sharing of a class novel.

To equip children with critical tools so they are able to analyse what they read.

To monitor each child’s progress through the use of a range of assessment strategies including informal assessments and formal testing as appropriate.

To support all groups of learners in maximising their reading potential.

Approach

At Arundale Primary School we follow the RWInc scheme to teach Reading and Phonics, supplemented with additional reading materials. Our approach is systematic, consistent and rigorous in order that all children become readers as quickly as possible.

Phonic sessions take place daily, as a RWInc session and as part of the English curriculum, alongside the Support for Spelling programme until no longer needed by all children. Some children will require additional phonic sessions or other reading support through intervention programmes such as Reading Recovery, Better Reading Programme or Reception Literacy Project. These are monitored through our additional needs system.

Pupils are taught in ability groups thus enabling them to be taught according to their reading level in their own class with activities being used to reinforce where appropriate.

All Staff are trained to deliver the phonics programme.

Reading Scheme

The children progress through a wide range of carefully levelled books from a variety of Publishers.

All Staff have undertaken inference training and older readers regularly work in small groups to develop their inference skills.

Phonics Guidance for Parents

Read Write Inc is a comprehensive synthetic phonics programme that teaches reading, writing and spelling. The programme is designed for children aged 4-7, but can be used as an intervention program for children in Key Stage 2.

The children start by learning 44 speed sounds and how to sound blend for reading. At the same time, they develop skills for handwriting and spelling. Through lively story books that contain words that the children can decode, the children progress to read and achieve early success.

How is it taught?

Read Write Inc is taught every day, and children are streamed into groups according to ability. Children are assessed every half term and groups are revised accordingly. Where children do not make the expected progress within a group, they receive 1-1 tuition.

RWI terminology

Your child may begin to use terminology that you are unfamiliar with - this glossary of terms may help!

Green words

Green words are words that can be broken down into sounds, and blended together to read.

Red words

Red words are words that cannot be broken down. These are taught explicitly, and are words that children need to read by sight.

Fred talk

Your child will be encouraged to sound out words that they cannot read. We call this “Fred Talk”. Fred is a frog that joins the children in every session and he can only talk in sounds!

c-a-t = cat

sh-o-p= shop

n-igh-t= night

Fred Fingers

Fred Fingers are used for spelling. Children hold up the hand that they do not write with. They sound out the word they are spelling and put up the correct number of fingers for the word.

For example: m-ee-t = 3 sounds = 3 fingers.

• Ask your child how many sounds they can hear in the word “meet”

• Ask your child to put up their Fred Fingers (there should be three)

• Using the hand that your child writes with, they pinch the first finger and say the first sound in the word ‘m’

• Pinch the middle finger and say ‘ee’

• Pinch the last finger and say ‘t’

• Fingers are pinched left to right, as we would read.

Phonic screening test

Children complete a phonic screening test in Year 1. If the children do not achieve the pass mark in Year 1, they will be retested in Year 2.

During the test, children are asked to decode both real and nonsense words.

Read Write Inc fully prepares children for this test, including the ‘nonsense words’ that we call ‘alien words’. Asking children to read these alien words requires the children to demonstrate their decoding skills.

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